Friday, 11 September 2015

I’ve had a few spa experiences, though I’m hardly a connoisseur. I've found a spa is a good place to
chill out and gossip with friends, and on the rare occasions when I stay at a
fancy hotel, I’ve come to enjoy the process of whiling away the period between
lunch and cocktails in a hot bubbly tub.

At the same time,
I’ve become fascinated by the language used to advertise the available
activities. I suspect most people who go to a spa don’t have any specific
ailments, but they want to come away feeling more relaxed and vibrant, and the talk of 'therapies' and 'treatments' manages to create the comforting illusion that health can be shifted
from suboptimal to optimal by various potions and practices. Particularly
intriguing is the focus on foodstuffs. In a spa, you don’t ingest food: you rub
it on the skin, sniff it, or slather yourself with it. I’ve
always suspected there is an element of sublimation in this: most women who
wish to remain slender have to suppress the desire to eat delicious things, and
the spa provides an opportunity to interact with food without getting fat.

In the hotel I’ve
been staying in you could be massaged with essential oils of grapefruit, have
mango butter rubbed on your feet or head, be scrubbed with papaya and mandarin,
or have your muscles relaxed by a concoction of rice and milk. Rather
disappointingly, they didn't offer the ultimate decadence: a ‘chocolate wrap’,
where you start with a warm milk soak, then get scrubbed with vanilla and bran,
before being enveloped in a warm cocoa butter ‘masque’ (a word that always reminds
me of Edgar Allan Poe's scary story).

It’s clear that
there’s a lucrative market for this kind of thing. Many of us feel stressed by
modern life, and if being smothered in chocolate or fruit makes us feel
relaxed, why not?

Alas, though, for
me the sense of relaxation is counteracted by irritation with the garbage that
you have to endure while undergoing something as basic as a pedicure. Some of
it is just overblown advertising guff, e.g. “Drawing on the elemental wisdom of
nature, our treatments both invoke and restore the body’s natural equilibrium”.
What does this even mean? The images are of blockage and decay being removed:
“Clearing stagnant energy is the focus of the Spring Clean Scrub”. But the
worst examples are those with medical overtones, with talk of healing, detoxification,
and wellness. We are told that: “This wrap is highly effective
in purging toxins and boosting the blood and lymphatic circulation” or "The polyphenols in cocoa delay the ageing process, causing you to look
younger". Or even “The body is generously encased within a cooling serum”.
Cripes! If you look up serum in a dictionary, this is a seriously scary idea.

I have, of
course, always just gone with the flow. Attempting to debate the scientific
basis of aromatherapy or ayurveda with a practitioner who makes their living
administering these treatments is unlikely to make either of us more relaxed
or vibrant. But I do wish someone would open a spa for rationalists, where one
could go and get a good massage or get encased in mud just for the fun of it,
without a lot of guff about energy blockages and deep-seated toxins.